WordPerfect 5.0 and 5.1 can breathe more life into a letter,number, or symbol key on your computer's keyboard by endowing oneor more of them with "dead key" capabilities. A "dead key" isone that doesn't seem to respond when pressed not until thenext key is struck then it jumps to life, combining thefunctions of both or simply supplying a special character orsymbol. They are especially useful for putting an accent mark onwords such as na5ve, co?perate, c=te, cos7, or ol). Or they canmake use of WordPerfect's "Compose" function to convert unisex"quotation marks" into the typeset variety or those used inwriting ?deutsch. Or supply any number of special symbols. Dead keys can effectively add a third dimension to WordPerfect'smacro facility by allowing one to reserve Alt and Ctrlmacrosfor more elaborate functions.

2HEach dead key has the capability of supplying over a dozendiacritical marks with only one keystroke and it can all be donemnemonically. As opposed to other methods, such as remappingkeys, the keytops will continue to faithfully describe theoperation of each key. Dead key functions are not limiteddiacritics or foreign languages: They are equally valuable tomnemonically produce typographical, mathematical, and othersymbols in lieu of or in addition to foreign languagediacritics. A dead key stroke followed by c could render , forexample. Or d for a dash"p for , r for : , , , , , , ,or any other of the myriad symbols in the "Compose" stable. Onceyou learn the technique you will soon find other applications forthem to the extent you may not bother to remap keys again.

Languages using the Latin alphabet require a sprinkling ofdiacritics: "Compose" can create all of them. And the easiestway to supply them is via a WordPerfect keyboard layout thatmakes maximum use of the deadkey technique. Remapping keysusing WordPerfect's remapping facility or creating Alt and Ctrlmacros for the diacritical marks one needs when typing in otherlanguages is fine if you only need an accented word here or2there. But if you are producing any amount of text in anotherlanguage neither of those methods can compare with the ease andspeed of using dead keys. The dead keys incorporated inFRENCH.WPK have all the diacritics needed for French, German,Italian and Spanish. You can easily modify it for any languagethat uses Latin based characters. GERMAN.WPK andPORT[uguese].WPK were developed in that way.

Copy FRENCH.WPK and the other .WPK files to the directory whereyour WordPerfect .WPM and .WPK files are. Then from aWordPerfect editing screen, go to the Keyboard Layout menu (Shift2H&F1). Select 5 Keyboard Layout and you will find INTERNAT,2'FRENCH, GERMAN and PORT along with those that were provided2'initially by WordPerfect. Choose Edit and Action to examine the'0*((macros that create the dead keys. Any of them can be easilypersonalized by simply substituting or adding letters or symbols. For example you could have the left bracket key ([) produce a (Pound Sterling symbol), or , or , or all three by adding $~$$~and {LABEL}$$~{RETURN} etc. to that deadkey macro.

In each of these WPKs the two keys assigned for deadkeyoperation are the bracket keys and the symbols and charactersproduced by first striking a dead key and then another are:[email protected];*D Default WPK < ! ? a e i o u c n s [ > a e i o u ] FRENCH WPK < ! ? a e i o u c n s > a e i o u

GERMAN.WPK is the same except that the functions of [ and { arereversed: [ produces umlauts and , while { produces the acuteaccents (even though they are not needed for German.) PORT.WPKhas macros added for M, L, S and R.

There are more accents available than any one language requiresbut it really doesn't matter as you simply use those that doapply. Add as many symbols as you wish; they and the foreignlanguage symbols will be there in the background waitingpatiently for you to press a dead key so they can jump to life.

The way it works is simple. Let's say you have been asked to2write Voil!, ya lleg; la cigGe9a. I don't know why anyone wouldwant to write that, except as an example to show the sequence of2Xkeys to press: Voil]a, ya lleg[o la cig{ue[na. The dead keyssimply associate the right diacritic with the letter thatrequires it. If you are writing Spanish and need to flip aquestion mark or an exclaimer upside down it's just as easy: [?becomes etc., giving you De veras? S1, de veras!

2 Put in Strae the same way, the M in SMo Paulo, and maintain2 your normal velocit! while you are doing it. And you can quoteme, ?quote me, or quote me as you prefer. Note, however,that some of the "Compose" symbols will not show on the screen,but most printers these days will print them correctly.